LAM, Sin-Manw Sophia

CHENG, Wing-Tung Michelle

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Dec 2021; Issue No. 10; p.17 - 44

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong

Chinese Language Program, Columbia University

Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

The study was conducted under the backdrop of the increasing demand of Mandarin-learning in Scotland and Hong Kong. Inspired by Gardner’s (2010) socio-educational model, this study is the first to compare students’ integrative motivation towards learning Mandarin under the two contexts. The data was obtained from a total of 132 secondary school students (54 from Hong Kong, and 78 from Scotland) through questionnaires. It also aimed to examine the robustness and culture-specific applicability of the model. Due to the geographical proximity and cultural similarity to Chinese, the integrativeness of non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students in Hong Kong is expected to be relatively higher compared to the students in Scotland. However, the results showed that NCS students displayed lower integrative motivation than students in Scotland. The significant difference we identified lay upon one of the constructs - fear of assimilation. This unexpected phenomenon could invite more in-depth studies on factors affecting integrative motivation in learning Mandarin.

Mandarin learning integrative motivation foreign language learning second language acquisition motivation intensity

English

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)